Written By Eric C. Blanding/Edited By: Shonda Renee' Porter
When I was first asked to write a piece on intimacy between God and Man, my first thought was, why would a man be intimate with God? I most certainly love and care deeply for God, but for me, at the time, intimacy was something that I would save for my significant other. As I thought on the subject more, I began to realize that my most intimate times are with God. Let us first define intimacy. One meaning reads: a close, familiar, and usually affectionate or loving personal relationship with another person or group. Another definition reads: …the quality of being comfortable, warm, or familiar: the intimacy of the room. Yet another continues by stating that intimacy is privacy, especially as suitable to the telling of a secret. These are all very interesting meanings indeed. As a man, the word intimacy screams of femininity. Most men, me included, wouldn’t put themselves in that category when referring to God because of our masculinity. While examining the meaning of intimacy and my own relationship with God, I have come to a conclusion. I strive to be closer to God; He is as familiar to me as my mother who birthed me. I love Him dearly, pray to Him and thank Him whenever His goodness crosses my mind; I beg Him for forgiveness and long to live forever in His kingdom. There is no one in the world I feel more comfortable with sharing everything that goes on in my life, the good and the bad. Isn’t it ironic how God knows all of our secrets, but we share them with Him anyway? That is apart of relationship building and the intimacy between God and man.
Thinking more on my intimacy with God, I take into account the times where I have cried rivers of tears when I have talked with God. If I had never revealed it today, no one outside of me and Him would know this. I have no shame at all with falling to my knees and thanking God for everything He has done for me. I have no fear of Him seeing me cry like a baby and begging him to forgive me for my shortcomings. I gladly give money out of my pocket to support his places of worship. I sing songs of joy and praise when He fills my soul. As men, we sometimes worry about how other men will look at us if they see us cry or on our knees praying and saying how much we love God. There is something inside a man that deceives them on a daily basis, and that is called pride. The same pride that caused Lucifer (Satan) in Isaiah 14:12-15 to fall from Heaven and be damned to walk in the Earth with a sentence of 1000 years in hell upon the return of Jesus Christ. It is foolish that we don’t want other men to see us form a relationship with God intimately because we may be looked at as weak or feminine.
I remember when I worked at call center a few years back; a few of the women whom sat around me started a small prayer group and would have prayer before work or during breaks. There were a few men present, I included, and sometimes a group member would give a small testimony. There were times I wanted to testify so badly, but I feared how the men in the group would look at me. This is when God stepped in, one of the men from the group came forward and testified until he was in tears, and it felt so good that it brought me to tears as well. Because God knew my heart and caters to my every desire that is in His will, He allowed that move to take place in the spirit. No I was not dotting every “I” or even crossing every “T”. If you had asked me at the time, I would have told you that I definitely wasn’t where I needed to be in God, but He saw fit to bless me with that experience anyway. When I left that day I thought a lot about that experience. I thought about the fact that the guy that gave that testimony showed way more power than I could ever have shown. I admired his relationship with God and him as a man, to love God and not be ashamed to let anyone know. I longed to not be ashamed to cry, to not care what anyone thought, to focus on God and I only. As I sit here and write this piece, I can feel him working inside of me. Yes, I long for a closer relationship with God. Each day that I move forward is a day that I thank God for all he has done. Sometimes it seems so hard to be thankful for the small things; God spoils us a lot, and when we don’t get what we want we tend to sulk. We need to be consistent and committed in this relationship. We can’t thank Him for some and not the other. We must remember even to thank Him for the strength just to get up out of the bed every morning. These are the little things that go unnoticed. Being thankful is surely apart of the equation to intimacy. Let us not think of intimacy as only being sweet kisses from our spouse, but more of closeness, a relationship, that means more than anything else. As men, we need this strength and understanding from God just as He needs us to be his loyal servants. Remember that God would NEVER be ashamed of us, therefore we should never be ashamed to show our love for Him. We can still be the strong, proud men that we are, but without God, we are nothing.
Thinking more on my intimacy with God, I take into account the times where I have cried rivers of tears when I have talked with God. If I had never revealed it today, no one outside of me and Him would know this. I have no shame at all with falling to my knees and thanking God for everything He has done for me. I have no fear of Him seeing me cry like a baby and begging him to forgive me for my shortcomings. I gladly give money out of my pocket to support his places of worship. I sing songs of joy and praise when He fills my soul. As men, we sometimes worry about how other men will look at us if they see us cry or on our knees praying and saying how much we love God. There is something inside a man that deceives them on a daily basis, and that is called pride. The same pride that caused Lucifer (Satan) in Isaiah 14:12-15 to fall from Heaven and be damned to walk in the Earth with a sentence of 1000 years in hell upon the return of Jesus Christ. It is foolish that we don’t want other men to see us form a relationship with God intimately because we may be looked at as weak or feminine.
I remember when I worked at call center a few years back; a few of the women whom sat around me started a small prayer group and would have prayer before work or during breaks. There were a few men present, I included, and sometimes a group member would give a small testimony. There were times I wanted to testify so badly, but I feared how the men in the group would look at me. This is when God stepped in, one of the men from the group came forward and testified until he was in tears, and it felt so good that it brought me to tears as well. Because God knew my heart and caters to my every desire that is in His will, He allowed that move to take place in the spirit. No I was not dotting every “I” or even crossing every “T”. If you had asked me at the time, I would have told you that I definitely wasn’t where I needed to be in God, but He saw fit to bless me with that experience anyway. When I left that day I thought a lot about that experience. I thought about the fact that the guy that gave that testimony showed way more power than I could ever have shown. I admired his relationship with God and him as a man, to love God and not be ashamed to let anyone know. I longed to not be ashamed to cry, to not care what anyone thought, to focus on God and I only. As I sit here and write this piece, I can feel him working inside of me. Yes, I long for a closer relationship with God. Each day that I move forward is a day that I thank God for all he has done. Sometimes it seems so hard to be thankful for the small things; God spoils us a lot, and when we don’t get what we want we tend to sulk. We need to be consistent and committed in this relationship. We can’t thank Him for some and not the other. We must remember even to thank Him for the strength just to get up out of the bed every morning. These are the little things that go unnoticed. Being thankful is surely apart of the equation to intimacy. Let us not think of intimacy as only being sweet kisses from our spouse, but more of closeness, a relationship, that means more than anything else. As men, we need this strength and understanding from God just as He needs us to be his loyal servants. Remember that God would NEVER be ashamed of us, therefore we should never be ashamed to show our love for Him. We can still be the strong, proud men that we are, but without God, we are nothing.
Posts
